Left, right, up, down

When I’m working in mixed media collage I work from the center outward. When I’m painting I work from right to left, specifically because I am left handed. If I were to work from left to right I would be obscuring my view of what I am working on and risking dragging my hand against it. I also work on a drafting table rather than an easel and because the angle is much less acute I can rotate the canvas or board as I am working on it. I wonder how many other artists do this. The easel is used to get some distance from the work in order to view and assess my progress.

Love your letter and your sense of humour! To be honest, I have never thought about it and couldn’t tell you because if I watch myself do art I can’t be getting on with doing art….um..

Have never thought about the significance of the painting sequence … in all my work I start with the background…I work the whole canvas first, either with paint or collage before I start in on my subject which is often positioned on the right, but facing left…I paint people. The layering process, and pentimento, is important to me…I feel all the previous layers inform the final painting. For this reason I often work over old paintings, a face over a floral for example…generally good things happen. It seems important that I react to surfaces, materials, the painting itself…

Interesting article. We have had this discussion many times in my art class. I am primarily a still life painter. I start at the top left background and end up (hopefully with a bang)at the front right! I am so entrenched that I always have my light coming from the left so it ends on the center of interest and foreground. Can hardly get my brain to work in any other way! It is my happy place.

It never occurred to me where I start a painting so I got up from my iPad and went over to look at a painting that I just started. Sure enough, being right dominated, I started on the upper right portion and it appears that I working to the left. With that said I do paint rather tight. I also tend to start a painting with the least interesting part just to get a feeling as to where I am going and as a warm up for the project.

I’m a top downer-because I was taught to do that. Since I paint landscapes with pastels in Plein air, it’s important to me to keep the work clean. Also putting a blue green line fairly early on to indicate horizon, is important, or I’ll get lost in the process. Being a fairly loose painter, I prefer to get a feel for the local color and light, as opposed to painting detail.

Everyone reading your letter is now getting up and examining their paintings and I am no different. I am surprised to learn that I have always begun my paintings, without fail, at the upper left! Even those paintings that have a prominent subject like a vase of flowers, I think first how it relates to the left side of the paper! By the time I get to the bottom right, I am usually wondering how to make this corner interesting – I have run out of ideas. I usually come up with something, though I notice the left side of my paintings are the more interesting. Once I get the basic things down, foreground, background, basic shapes, I then go front to back to refine the space. This left side leaning surprises me. I am right-handed. Once I broke my right wrist and while it was in a cast I wanted to continue painting but couldn’t. I found it easier to work with collage, so I created collage paintings with my left hand for the summer my wrist was healing. I don’t remember starting them on the left side in the same way – more in the middle. My poor brain.

I usually start working on the largest shapes and continue all over the canvas – a little here, a little there – as I add colors, figure out where the work is going, and refine it. Just like my writing, I go from the general to the specific and revise a lot. I have seen painters go from one spot and continue painting outward from it, like painting the side of a house, and completely finishing each passage as they move on, until the work is completed. There is a painter in our group who paints like that, starting at the upper left and radiating out until she’s finished. I’m too undisciplined and scatterbrained to work that way.

while awaiting my turn for an adjudicated show which allowed us a private precise of our work I happened to overhear the honoured guest ask the artist if she had added her sky in afterwards. I suppose there were some telltale marks. This has stuck in my brain made me cautious so that my pieces going into juried shows etc. do not have such distractions. That said I do not favour formatted painting and like to let loose letting the colour often converse with me. I have learned better how to adjust background and skies by going back in and overlapping the foreground to give the proper distancing effect. It is tricky though and perhaps a little more time consuming. However, sometimes a nearly finished painting needs the sky colour adjusted or background to enhance a forground colour or effect. p.s I paint from left to right usually. On a paintout one of our more sage painters/teachers remarked I could start with the subject of frozen pond waters and work from that point of interest as that is what I loved about the scene. She was right.

My watercolors are created like the old (now ancient) first Polaroid cameras developed a photo. Starting with a gloss white paper, light, misty almost abstract shapes result after a few seconds then darker, hard edges appear after about 2 minutes.

Hello Robert !I often wonder how your brain comes up with such interesting artistic subjects for these bi-weekly conversations . Your current topic is very interesting-about how we get started doing art . Since I am mostly self-taught my paintings might be different than others . I do my drawings on the canvas and they always emanate from lower center to either side and then upwards. The actual painting process always emanates from the top down . Most of the time I have a vision in my mind of what I want the finished painting to look like before I start . Doesn’t always happen to end that way — but that is the originating thought processes . Sometimes nice accidents happen. I always paint the background first to try and capture the emotions and color harmonies that are more subtle and then sharpen the color and composition dynamics as the painting moves downward to the focal points . As I ponder my painting processes and your question of interest more I have come to the conclusion that one of the main reasons I paint the way I do is that the last thing I am working on is the most important topic or interest point for the painting .Thus, hopefully i end up with a larger sense of satisfaction when it is completed . All the Best — Joseph Murray-Wayuga Art Studio-Jefferson, Iowa

I never truly considered the aspects raised, but I begin by painting in my background …from top left, working over to the right and down to the bottom as I go. I then begin working on the subject matter which is usually pretty central. And yes, I do find that the balance on the left is fairly spontaneous, and that I sometimes need to think about the right hand side with more care.

It is common to look for signs of the brain’s separate hemispheric functions in the things we do, but such over-simplifications are seldom correct unless and individual’s eyes are fixed on an object, with all peripheral visual stimuli (to that object) thus landing on either the right or left portions of the retina. Only then will those images be transmitted to the brain’s right or left hemisphere, and thus be interpreted with there, but almost instantaneously shared with the opposite hemisphere via the corpus callosum. Interestingly, there is evidence that since western languages are based on grapheme/phoneme, and (especially with English) are vast in their vocabulary, that they, when compared with top-down asian languages which are visual symbols/characters with much less opportunity for nuance, that this explains the relative disparity between western and eastern creativity.

I usually do back ground, middle ground, subject, which falls more or less into layers. Even that tends to be top-bottom. I “switch” when I get to my subject and then go darks to lights. I’m a great believer in turning my canvas upside down and sideways to fix problem areas … so I guess I’m reversing? I remember watching a demo on Robert Bateman, who paints darks to lights and he was all over the canvas.

thought provoking article – i am going to try different approches and see the results – i recently changed my palette from left to right, white to dark and noticed a big difference mentallly because i am dsylexic. panitng from the top down is going to be quite a challenge – i usuallly start dark to light all over the canvas — work my shapes and then the point of interest — however some of my better paintings have started with the point of interest? It would be interesting to see if the viewer could tell where you started… any comments?

I look to the left when at my desk because there is a blank white wall to my right, not because I suddenly shift to right brain mode. I am thinking if I were to repaint that white wall on my right, I would paint from top left corner, left to right and top to bottom. That appears to be a natural and practical way to do it, not having single creative or artistic implication. I think a mountain from a mole hill is this issue. An eastern room painter might start it from the opposite corner. My watercolor subjects are mostly landscapes, so starting at the top left corner and working across and down is painting distant, mid, and near areas, working light to dark is also a purely practical process. It’s more how well you do that than the process.

I’m a pastel artist and usually start with the sky first,sets the mood and the painting progresses from there ,usually from the top down, so I don’t rub my hand in the pastels.

I seem to work more left to right, but that is my natural inclination in reading a book. I always start at the last page and flip through it back to front initially. I have always thought it weird that westerners want to label people with terms like dislexia (sp?). To me, we are the backwards ones in the west…for thousands of years our ancestors wrote or documented information from left to right…so it makes common sense to me that we would have a natural tendancy to do this. I’m curious to know if anyone else has thought of this…?

Yah…I meant right to left! LOL!

I used to busk in the park with a fellow artist who painted from the top down. That’s the method she was taught at a leading art school affiliated with Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in the 60’s! By the 90’s, she just could not change her ways. Myself I pretty much start with the darkest patch and then the lightest point, the most saturated color, and work towards the middle, keying everything toards these 3 areas,whether in pastel, oil, acrylic or even collage and mixed media which is my favourite medium now.

I look forward to your letters every week. I was originally taught by decorative artists and always the sky or background was painted first. I continue to start my paintings at the top and yes they tend to be tight, controlled and detailed. Now that I realize what I have been doing, I am going to start elsewhere on the canvas with the hope of becoming looser, wilder and messier in my paintings, something that I have been aspiring to for several years. I’ll let you know how it all turns out.

I just thought I’d mention, in this connection, that Mary Whyte of Charleston, SC – to my mind one of the finest watercolorists anywhere, admonishes in her instructional DVD to paint first the largest area of the composition, in order to set a value reference point, and then proceed to the next largest, etc. Not quite the same issue you were discussing, perhaps, but if followed it would rather restrict the left-right-up-down choice. More generally, I think watercolorists face a number of considerations peculiar to that medium that tend to control starting points (dark over light, not the contrary, for example) depending on the color layout of the planned composition.

I try to block in my paintings all at once. Lately, I’ve been priming my canvas grey then I will add the white then the black. Ta da..Then I have a clear map of where I’m going in the painting. Colour goes in on top of that. It’s a good way to save on time and paint.

Personally I start my painting from the middle. People often ask me why I seem to paint myself into that situation and having to struggle painting the background into small detailed areas. I guess my enthusiasm for the center is part of who I am.

Interesting that you should write about this today. This week I’m working on a small art quilt (20 x30). I conceived the composition one way, then noticed I sewed some of the strips the other way, shifting the focal point from right to left. It felt uncomfortable at first, then I decided to go with it as a challenge to “change”.

A quick glance around my studio and it is obvious that I lean toward left focused. My landscapes tend to be composed to draw the eye to the left (although not exclusively). Figures and wildlife tend to be on the left, but when on the right they are almost always looking to the left or have a strong foreground element on the left. Paintings with strong foreground elements on the right seem awkward to me (though I have done some). To be honest, I had never given this a lot of thought other than an intuitive feeling of comfort with a particular composition. Fascinating.

Interesting observations and information. Thought provoking, to be sure!

When I do an oil painting, I paint in the darks first and work backwards to the lights from there. It doesn’t matter where they’re located. When I do a watercolor I think of the lightest lights first and start painting from there. Foreground, background, center of interest are part of the whole composition. Every painting starts with a small value study, which becomes my “map” of progression.

Since I paint portraits, I tend to start in the center and wherever the darkest shadows are. Any correlation to anything in my innermost being in this kind of habit? Intelligent? Dumb? Great painter? Poor Painter? Glad you are able to travel and revel in all kinds of light!

As pastels were the first medium I used, working from the top down kept the work fresher and cleaner. It just seemed natural to work the same way in other media. In landscape painting, the sky creates the mood so I always paint it first, and paint downwards. Colour selection also works very well from the top down. The colours stay fresh and don’t require modification. It has also been a reason I haven’t considered teaching as I don’t know that many people could relate to this top to bottom process.

I find your comments very interesting regarding the left brain- right brain. Does this stem from left hand right hand which goes back in most children to well before painting became part of their lives. It is also interesting how much art you can look at and know whether the artist is left handed or right handed. So many things to think about and so little time.

Great question, it’s something that can become so automatic, yet at some point a preference must have emerged. With landscapes, I start with the horizon line, deciding where I’m going to position it, marking it in the centre, then left and right, check it’s horizontal and join the dots. From this I work into the sky and land below the horizon, often with the same colour, which will ultimately be the lowest layer only. With figures, I start with the head, a light rough outline, then mark the rest of the figure guided by the size of the head, then refine as a whole. Definitely a “big picture” not a “one-section-at-a-time” painter.

Three of the my last five paintings I started on the right. But the two lefties are my personal bests.

I thought I had hit upon a unique insight when I discovered that I work in concentric circles, from the center outward and back again. Thanks for this letter which affirms for me that what is so right for me may not be the only way, unique to me, or all that unusual — but may be an indication of how I think! Now I will have to spend some time contemplating that idea.

all that matters is that we Create, freely~ The heart leads & the eyes see the stars shiny light, leading us home~

The crimson ghost of a gaucho wandered the steaming pampa, observed by a peripatetic Canadian artist with the right attitude and an active left brain. While the smiling guanaco knew the fate of his Auntie’s Grampa and ruminated on the effect of “yerba mate” on visiting foreign folks.

Most interesting thought on how we start paintings. I had to think about it. I don’t start with any particular side, I start with the subject where ever that may be, in the left, right, bottom or top, then I continue around the subject and all over, where ever my eye thought wanders.

I think of myself as working from the back, (or the depth) of my painting, to the front (or the surface) of my work. Possibly because I work in a “layering” or “glazes” of paint that I often think in this way.

I found your commentary fascinating. One thing you may have neglected in all this from right to left and visa versa business is as a lefty, I often begin on the right and top and work toward the left and bottom so as to not smear my work as I go! I am also a watercolorist, and it is easier to let the paint move from the top down unless one does a lot of tilting of the paper!

I and my fellow watercolorists seem to start with main subject just off center …both from top and sides and bottom!

Ahhh… left – right – up or down? I found this letter very interesting and never tire of reading about this topic. It seems new to me every time I see this information. I guess that is a problem with being dyslexic! I wonder if Robert would want to write about dyslexia and art… or maybe he wants to tackle the bigger question “Is there really a Dog?”

When I start a painting now, I usually do rough sketch, basically beginning with the subject in the middle and then the background in sepia color. After that, I start with the BACKGROUND and work my way forward which means the upper left hand corner for clouds or sky. I do work the subject soon after that but at this point is it basically an under-painting. When finishing the painting, I work the same way. Background to foreground, with the details of the subject usually the very last thing to be done. Occasionally I will go back and add touches to the background that I feel are needed. Like those men, I am tight, rendered, and focused.

I would love to know how many other portrait artists like myself prefer to paint best from one side of the model (the model’s left side) so much stronger that I tend to gravitate to that “desired” position every time I come before a model! I paint alternately starting from top to bottom, left to right and visa versa with no problem. I’ve overcome this “one-sided tendency” somewhat by forcing myself to draw or paint from my “weaker” side, but I tend to labor over the work less efficiently till I get it right! Hmmm, I wonder if I was once tilted to one side inside the womb too long!!! Perhaps I had just practiced drawing from one same direction for so long as a youngster that I couldn’t catch the other side up!!! That seems unlikely though.

I once read an article by a brain surgeon who said that creative/computing brain thing is conceptual and it doesn’t correspond to the left/right hemispheres of the brain. For example, a person with a brain injury that looses ability to speak may re-learn it by developing the same ability in the other hemisphere of the brain from where the original damaged one. So I am guessing that left-right brain inclination the way artists talk about it, shouldn’t have anything to do with the left/right side of the painting.

What about all over? When I am doing paintings that are purely abstract I just start laying down a color all over the paper, then clean my brush and put a different color down all over with no thought to what I am doing. It is very fun and seems to take me to a place that is meditative. When I am doing this, I do not care for what any outcome might be. Sometimes I like these paintings a great deal and other times not. That is not the purpose. After I have the color in, I come back and fill in some of the white spaces with black using a sharpie marker. I skip the rule that watercolorists must mix all their own darks. After the painting is finished, I and others can see images that I did not intend but that I love!

Do you have to think, “I am working on the right side of my brain today or the left side of my brain today?” Can we dictate which side of the brain works by saying it loud? Your inspiration and the subject matter dictates how you lay out your composition. It does not matter where one starts as long the principles of good painting are applied. Perspective, balance, proportions, lines and color all contribute enhancing the focal point and composition so I don’t think it matters very much where one starts. What is important is knowing your subject and the source of light to apply the proper highlights and shadows.

I tend to start smack in the middle of the page. I have trouble filling the whole canvas. I’m trying to be more aware of this.

Did anyone ever think that a right-handed person might work from left to right (and vice-versa) simply because (same goes for from top to bottom) he/she would not be dragging his/her arm or hand through wet paint so they would not be smearing the paint or themselves.?

In art college days we were soundly discouraged from working in any other way other than blocking in tonally and working all over the subject, loosely, not getting stuck anywhere. I am so glad we did this, it is like jumping off a cliff over and over until you just do it. I think if you work in oils you work differently, usually blocking in the largest areas first and starting in dark tones, in water color this is not really a good idea. Pastels – I love oil pastels because I feel like a child in a lolly shop. The ready made colors in front of me become the main inspiration and not the left or right or anything else, and my pastels (oil ones) are my most satisfying work, I just go to a different zone.

I have had to learn to paint upside down because its the only way to reach unless the picture is a smallish one. As a wheelchair use I can’t use and easel so I rest the canvas on my knee, and propped up against the table. So, I end up just turning the canvas round to where I can reach. I don’t think I have ever painted a sky the right way up. Ceilings can be difficult that for sure, but its all in the process of painting, and I get there in the end. Happy painting folks.

I’m a female top-downer. I’m also a predominant left-weighter. Sadly, my work is not especially tight or careful. It’s loaded with the textural evidence of my do-overs. I gave a talk on some of my paintings and claimed the left-weightedness in the majority of my paintings had political significance. That is, perhaps I was symbolically indicating my left-leaning preference. True or not, it gave them an arguable essay topic. Or maybe my left-handedness has something to do with it.

Watercolor artists approach a painting differently because of the transparency and need to preserve our white paper. Our concern is not for where to start, but for what is behind and farthest in the background. Pulling a variegated wash down from the top, or dropping in a multi colored surrounding for beginning backgrounds is often the start for transparent watercolors. Layers and layers follow to bring the viewer to the front of the scene.

I paint from the center and then go in an arch right to left most of the time. However, I have started in the middle and then worked bottom to top or top to bottom.

Your comments made me chuckle………..For the past year or so I have been starting in the lower right area; ok I guess. However, not so when you are right handed and are working in graphite. Why do I do this – haven’t got a clue! As far as painting; after an undercoat and sketchy drawing, I usually begin with the center of interest where I tend to have the darkest darks and lightest lights. These usually are on the right side of the work also.

With my composition blocked in carefully; I start with the faces of the figures . I wet-in-wet with hard and lost edges on their facial contours and shadows; then go straight for the eyes. To me, the eyes are everything. I then mix my flesh tones and paint in all of the flesh………….. From there on, the painting leads me on, normally starting on the left of the paper and working across all foreground objects including clothing. I leave all the background detail and woozley stuff until the very end. Thank you for the very intriguing letter

I begin to put on the paint in the middle of my paintings. I then work down to complete the foreground and then up for the background.

Knock, knock … where’s Robert? He’s in “R.Genn-tina”. (Groan.)

The different approaches artists use to start their paintings may in part depend on the medium they use. Watercolorists tend to start at the top and with light colors, gradually working their way towards the darker values. In acrylic it might not matter so much where one starts, as everything dries so fast. But in oil, the medium I use, the choice is wide open. Oil stays wet for a long time and you could start anywhere. Personally, I begin with a sketch in either charcoal or thin oil, to establish the placement on the canvas. The process of drawing, I feel, is much more directed by left brain than by right brain activity, still, I tend to do that from left to right. Once that is done, and color comes into play, I work quickly and everywhere, all over the picture-plane. That helps me to better see the color and value relationships. Since everything is relative this is very important to me. One color influences how I see the adjacent one, so I don’ t want to separate foreground from background or center of interest from “less important areas” – everything is equally important. I probably tend to start with the color that “calls” me most and then work my way outward from there – wherever that place may be. Once the whole canvas is covered and I am happy with the color relationships, I finish the painting, going over most areas with thicker color, mainly working my way from the left to the right and from top to bottom.

I, likewise paint/draw from right to left. I teach my artists to do likewise, beginning their art on the opposite side of their dominant hand. To drive home this point with novice artists, we do a positive/negative space project using black paint or ink. After that, hand drag is a thing of the past. When we do blind contour drawing at the studio, there is a natural direction that each of us follows as we draw. After we do several rotations of natural direction, having the artists reverse their direction will engage more of their brain and they will then draw what they see, not what they think they see. Then I have them start at the bottom rather than the top.

This is interesting…I paint interpretive realism. I think I paint all over the place, starting with where the color is going to go that I have dipped into. I paint everywhere on the canvas….maybe because my aversion to routine and rules.

A long time ago, some friends wanted drawing lessons…we worked from still life….each one of them had a unique and really rigid way of beginning a drawing…one started everything in the upper right corner, another tilted everything, another lined everything up on a surface…as a non-interventionist at the time, all I could do was point their patterns out and see what happened and nothing changed. I am a terrible teacher! The person who lined everything up had studied office management and did this for university presidents…I guess it is good I didn’t intervene…no telling what chaos might have ensued at those universities!

Well, I always start with the background behind my subject first from left to right. I do close-up portraits of Grizzly Bears at the moment, so I then start with the eyes and then work out in all directions where ever the flow of hair takes me. I then finish with the foreground. I suppose I am a mix of top down and inside out, lol!

I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Jeremy Lipking, but he is a supreme figural artist, and he starts with the eye, then moves to the face, then continues outward, until the painting is finished. He finishes everything before moving on, and he doesn’t change or go back and revise. I’ve seen his CD, and it is absolutely frightening — it is completely the opposite of the way I learnt to paint — keeping all parts of the picture developing simultaneously — and his work is masterful.

Well, I have had to give this some thought…to figure out “WHAT DO I DO”?? Sounds funny, since I’ve been painting over 40 years…But the bottom line is: always lead with your SOUL…the passion, of what you do, and even if not the “best” choice…your passion will carry almost any “wrong” choice…PASSION is what art is all about! However, using my left brain portion of the creative process, I begin with my main focus … and start there! From the basic design, and composition, to the laying in of colors and values, down to the final details. As the painting progresses, the balance of the painting will be dictated by the main focus. There should only be ONE MAIN CHARACTER, and there should be no question what that is! (BUT, the FULL choice of color and value, are taken from the creative part of my brain, not the TOTAL logical part!) If you do not focus primarily on your center of interest, then the values, colors and other details that you place in the secondary areas, may not leave you enough room, to get the main subject captured, with the limits our two dimensional paint will allow. And also, you may create too much interest thru color or value contrast, in areas that are less important, and thus will detract from the main center of interest. Like actors in a play or movie… there should only be one “hero”, one “damsel”, one villan…and the rest are supporting characters!! This does not mean, you totally finish the main center of interest, before working the remainder of the composition…the entire painting needs to be worked up at a consistent rate, but remembering to play down areas that do not directly support the center of interest. Again, these choices should be made from your FEELINGS, of what is best, from your soul…no logic will help with the choices…because in the end, you are CREATING, not COPYING what you FEEL about what LIFE is showing us!!!